Blizzard doesn't give you disks any more either, last I checked. I mean there are physical disks, but they feed back into Battle.net. Off hand, I know Diablo 3 doesn't work at all without a B.net account, and I believe Starcraft 2 requires one as well.

I actually just checked a couple kickstarter games. As near as I can tell, while they're the most passionate members of the fandom, their scores don't actually seem to skew the results in the real world. I'd guess they're passionate for, and against, in roughly equal proportions to the general population.

I mean, I get the concern, but, your key activations and steam purchased copies should roughly match each other for reviews. If they don't, then that's a huge sign that something's gone wrong.

The new system certainly isn't foolproof, but it seems more resistant to tampering than the previous one, where free keys for reviews did happen, and skewed some games' scores.

That's actually what they do now. You can actually configure and filter the reviews you're seeing a lot more coherently now.

What the author is going off on is the default settings. The config panel is prominently displayed over the reviews themselves. So you can absolutely tweak around the reviews to see if it looks like something shady is going on with the scores.

I recall a case, last year sometime, when the party was ordered to initiate a civil action against an 8 year old by their insurance company.

Without the lawsuit, the insurance company refused to pay out on a medical claim.

No idea if that's this case, but it's entirely possible to end up in a situation where you have to initiate a civil action against someone, even a particularly detestable civil action. But, not really have a choice, short of bankrupting youself.

No... it's not an interpretation. It's may well be a metaphor for growing up in a fundamentalist home, and being exposed to the outside world, or it may simply be a criticism of fundamentalist Christians and pathological religious zealotry in general.

What it's not is a bible story. Interpreted, reinterpreted, hung from the ceiling by it's ankle, it doesn't matter. It is the story of a mentally ill woman trying to kill her own son.

And also "bad forensic science." There's an absurd willingness of juries in this country to accept anything presented in court as "forensic" fact, even when it's just the expert witness making an educated guess and then presenting that as fact.

The underfunding of public defenders doesn't help. But, you tell a jury this guy in a suit can prove it through means they don't really understand, and then they'll think back to all those nights they fell asleep watching CSI, and think, "well I trust these guys, they've got magic science to back them up."

Isn't Train Simulator the one where a lot of the DLC is actually generated by modders? So, they design a new train, and then the developers publish it, and the modder gets a cut. I'm honestly asking, because I don't remember.